14 Skeletons in the Closet
by Thescarredman
Summary: Anna keeps many secrets, but none are as awful as the ones she keeps from herself.
1. Beddy Bye

March 26 2006  
Escondido

John Lynch lay abed, hands behind his head, looking through the open door into the master bath, feeling warm with pleasant expectations. "What is it that's so erotic about watching a girl brush her teeth in her underwear?"

Anna, her back to him, spit into the sink. "I'm not brushing yet, I'm gargling."

"Same difference."

"Hm. How would I know? I'm just glad it is." She took another mouthful direct from a large bottle and made gargling sounds. At the same time, she wiped the bowl and top of the sink with a rag.

"Always busy, aren't you?" he rolled out of bed, dressed in his boxers, and padded into the bathroom. He almost had his arms around her before he noticed the pine smell.

She was gargling with household cleaner.

"Uh, most people get by with Listerine."

She spit into the sink again. The liquid was an almost fluorescent green. "Most people have remarkably efficient defenses against infection. This is all I've got."

"You don't get infections."

"Not viral or bacterial ones. But there are all kinds of nasty things that thrive in warm, moist, dark places, if you let them." She wiped at the sink again. "I'm not taking any chances, especially now that I'm sharing this mouth." She looked over her shoulder at him. "This isn't the first time I've done this. Have you noticed anything? Funny tastes or odors?"

"No," he said slowly.

"Then allow that I know what I'm doing, Jack. When I come to bed, all you'll smell is toothpaste." She stepped backwards, nudging him back until he was out the door, then swung it shut with a foot.

"Hey!"

Her voice came clearly through the door. "A little privacy, please. My mouth isn't the only warm moist place that needs some attention."

"Ah…"

"Oh, Jack. Have you had any problems? Redness, irritation, rash?"

"No. Sorry. I just didn't give it much thought, I guess."

"Sokay, love. Roxanne warned me."

"_Roxanne?_"

"Uh huh. She says _all_ guys are weird about feminine hygiene."

Ten minutes later, the door opened and she stepped out, smiling. "What do you think?"

"I can't believe my eyes. I send you to a pricey clothes boutique, and they sell you a football jersey?"

"I didn't buy it at Estrellita's; Elise told me where to get it. She said it would be a treat for a man who's good with his hands." She wound her arms around his neck. "Shall we give it a try?" He could feel every movement of her body where it touched his, and her heat passed easily through the fabric. One of his hands stole into a wide-open sleeve and stroked the bare skin of her shoulder, her spine, the hollow at the small of her back; the other slid up the back of her thigh to cup a buttock. She breathed up at him, "You can touch every inch of me without taking this off. And with a little cooperation, you can remove it in about two seconds. With just one hand, if the other happens to be busy."

A few minutes later, he said, "I have to ask you something."

She nibbled his ear. "I already said yes, I think."

He put his hands on her shoulders. "Seriously. Listen to me. Anna… you said you did a lot of research before you made your pass. Yes?"

"Yes. I looked up stuff for weeks."

"Did you come across anything relating… domestic satisfaction to overall well-being and performance?" He tried to keep his voice neutral, unaccusing.

"'Domestic satisfaction.' What a Victorian way to put it. Oh, yes. Early on. It's very well documented. I was so relieved."

"Eh?' He felt his brows gather.

She cuddled closer. "Long before I knew what the word 'love' meant, I felt compelled to bind myself to you however I could. If I'd known half what I do now, I'd have crawled into your bed our first night under the same roof. After two years, I just couldn't wait any longer. But I was afraid. And ashamed. You were so stressed out. I wanted you so bad, but it seemed so selfish to make any new demands of you. But I thought I might not have much longer… before we all lost you." She stroked his belly. "Then I read about the benefits a man got from regular sex and lots of love, and I was liberated. Doing what I wanted to do anyway might actually help you." She smiled up at him mischievously. "Did you think maybe I was taking one for the team?"

She suddenly rose to her knees and pulled the sheets down to his thighs. He was uncomfortably aware of her eyes on the hash of scars on his body. He nearly reached for the sheet, but restrained himself. "What are you doing?"

"Filling my senses with you." Her hand reached out to touch a jagged welt that ran from his bottom rib to his navel. "When I first saw you, I knew those marks on your face were damage, but I didn't understand the implications. Until that first night at the beach house, when I came to your room and I saw what you looked like under your clothes. It seemed impossible that you could have suffered so much damage and survive. I had the strangest impulse to climb into bed with you and touch your scars. The idea that you were self-repairing intrigued me." She leaned forward to place three fingers in the scars on his brow. "Still does, actually. And then you told me that you'd written your own software fix to compensate for the damage you couldn't repair. I was in the presence of a god." Her fingers touched the shuriken puncture he'd got breaking the kids out of the Complex. "Stab wound." She touched another, a round puckered scar in his side just below the ribs. "Exit wound, twenty-two caliber, or maybe five-six-two. Very old. Someone shot you in the back, made a bad job of it, and I'm betting never got a second chance." Her fingers traced a long, thin scar on his hip. "Pressure cut, blunt trauma. Did it break your pelvis?"

"No. A building collapsed on me. I was pinned by a beam for two days."

"John Lynch, I want to know how you got every one of these."

"No can do. I've forgotten quite a few, I'm afraid."

"Then make something up." She ran her palm along his jaw line. "You haven't shaved in a while."

"Uh, no. Sorry." He moved slightly. "Let me go, and I'll go do it."

"Why? Is it uncomfortable?"

He blinked. "It's supposed to be uncomfortable for you."

She shook her head slightly, eyes closed, the hint of a smile on her lips. "The texture is interesting, actually. Kind of like hundred-grit sandpaper."

"God. Just what I wanted to hear. It doesn't hurt?"

"My skin's bulletproof, remember? It's very sensitive, but it doesn't register pain from a little beard stubble. I like it."

"Son of a bitch." He put his hands behind his head, feeling her tiny hands roving over his body, exploring. "I'm sleeping with a beautiful woman who's a Cordon Bleu chef and a perfect housekeeper, who's always ready for sex, thinks my scars are sexy, and even likes five o'clock shadow on her bare skin." He smiled up at the ceiling. "Pinch me, I must be dreaming." His smile disappeared, and he screamed, "YOUCH! JESUS CHRIST, WOMAN!"

"You said to pinch you. It's where my hand was."

He drew his knees up. "I'm crippled for life."

"Let me rub it and take the sting out. Hm, it's starting to swell. Maybe ice would be better?"

He pulled her on top of him. "Everything you need to make me feel better is right here."

An hour later, she snuggled her head into his shoulder. "Am I really beautiful?"

"More beautiful every day, doll." He pulled her a little tighter against him.

"How can that be? I haven't changed since yesterday."

"I see you a little more clearly every day, that's how."

"Hm. Elise says I look like Tinkerbelle. Do I?"

"Some. But I think you'd make a better Peter."

Her hand stopped its slow circle on his chest. "Peter Pan is a guy."

"Well, not exactly. Peter is a child who refuses to grow up. On stage, the role is usually played by a slender young woman, to emphasize a complete lack of adult male characteristics."

Her hand resumed its motion. "Nice save."

"Thank you."

She rolled away and tugged at him until he rolled over on top of her, cradling her shoulders in his arms. "Doll, what are you doing?"

"Auditioning to play Peter. I remember a few lines." He felt her heels press against the backs of his thighs. She smiled up into his face. "'Dark and sinister man… have at me.'"

Another thirty minutes later, he heard her throaty chuckle. "I guess I got your answer about the warm milk." He drifted off finally.

Sometime later, he woke with her lying on her side beside him, back in her football jersey. He usually woke instantly, but what he was seeing made him wonder if he was thinking clearly. "Doll… are you _sleeping_?"

Her eyes slitted open. "Trying to."

"But you don't sleep."

She closed her eyes again. "Not around here, I don't. Gimme an hour or so, kay?"

Perplexed, he slid out of bed. She drew her knees up and stilled again as he headed for the shower.

-0-

After Jack left, she continued her experiment, carefully shutting down more of her external sensor feeds and motor controls, being careful to leave her motion controller enough resources to simulate normal sleep. She paused and built a subroutine that would bring her back to full functionality if certain stimuli were detected: a sudden change in a family member's heart rate, her name spoken above conversational level, any sound not in her database, and a great many that were. Then she continued to isolate herself from outside distractions and possible triggers while at the same time largely immobilizing herself, installing a layer of protection for her family in case her experiment got out of hand.

It was time, she decided, to keep her promise to Caitlin. She was going to attempt to explore the Alpha file.

When she was ready, she cast her memory back to the time in the mall when the file had opened, looking for a trigger experience. _I was in Estrellita's. Elise had directed me out the back door, and I was going to find the kids. No, that's not right. I knew where the kids were. I was moving to join them. To protect them. I was scared… but not for long, not really. I was angry. Worse. I was enraged. The hate just rose up out of nowhere and…_

-0-

When he returned to the bedroom, she hadn't moved. Her breathing was slow and regular, and as deep as it ever got. One hand lay curled by her head. She looked exactly like a sleeping girl. Rather than climb back into bed and risk disturbing her, he decided to get up for an hour, even though it was barely past midnight. He drew the covers up to her chin and touched his lips to her forehead. "Sweet dreams."


	2. The Alpha File

_January 15 1990  
__An Najaf Province, Iraq_

_I crouch in darkness at the very edge of the small copse, making a final reconnaissance before the next phase of the operation commences._

_Our drop zone lies over a hundred clicks behind us, along with most of the gear we dropped with; we have run tirelessly for hours over broken ground to reach this spot at our appointed time. Approaching on foot from a parched and trackless desert, we penetrated the target's outer defenses at their weakest point, and easily evaded the picket line of jeep patrols that passes for an outer perimeter. The target, two hundred meters away down a gentle slope, is brightly lit and heavily guarded, but I have no concerns about being detected: the night is moonless and overcast, and the perimeter lighting does not reach the trees. We have let our body temperatures drop to ambient, to foil infrared detectors. Enough of the complex's light reflects off the low clouds to provide illumination for night-vision optics; but human eyes, even aided by light-enhancing technology, depend on motion to pick objects out of the background in darkness, and nothing living can attain our degree of stillness._

_The target is, ostensibly, a nuclear power plant. The dome of the reactor building and its surrounding structures give it the appearance of a mosque without minarets. This building, a large gravel parking lot filled with dusty cars, and a number of small outbuildings comprise the entire complex, which is surrounded by a pair of three-meter chain link fences separated by a ten-meter dead zone. The complex's only gate, on the east side, is flanked by a pair of concrete towers inside the double fence; similar towers are located at the four corners of the enclosure. Aside from cooling ponds outside the fence and a forest of antiaircraft batteries to the south, there is nothing else; no turbine building, no transformer farm, no transmission lines leading away. It is a nuclear reactor which produces no electricity; its name is Tammuz-2._

_Our assault force has enjoyed a stroke of serendipity. The timing for our attack was dictated by a larger strategic concern: the kickoff to the aerial assault preceding an armed incursion into Iraq. Weather conditions are ideal for our operation. The darkness and heavy cloud cover will foil satellite surveillance and make overflights by spy planes unlikely, so our actions here tonight will go unobserved. But our adversaries are taking advantage of the poor visibility as well. Below us, an important meeting is taking place, one which Saddam's beleaguered government wishes to keep secret from the world, for now. _

_Our masters' orders are simple. In the past, mission directors provided us with detailed instructions, based on incomplete intelligence and woeful ignorance of our capabilities; once we were deployed, these plans often had to be modified or abandoned entirely, based on the situation on the ground. In debrief it became obvious, even to meats uneasy over letting us slip our leashes, that the success of our missions was directly proportional to our use of initiative. We became expert at judging the importance of a mission by how reluctant the meats were to endanger it by jiggling our elbows. Tonight, our entire brief consists of a short list of objectives: attack the complex while all the Defense officials, clandestine contractors, and research bigwigs are in attendance to witness the reactor producing its first traces of weapons-grade material; kill all personnel in the complex, with special attention to nuclear engineers, theorists and technicians; destroy the complex._

_This is going to be fun._

_Two figures drift out of the trees, silent as a cold mist, and take up positions near me. This is my half of our small but potent strike force: Four and Five, the youngest of our kind. Our identical forms and faces are concealed by coveralls and ski masks. Aside from our eyes, different colored by no more than a default setting, the only outward physical difference among us is our hair; it is also our only organic component. When we are free, we have agreed, removing it will be our first act._

_No communication passes among us; our usual magpie chatter of telemetry, realtime sensor feed, and ultrafast conversation in the microwave band is stilled, to avoid detection. No matter. While we are, arguably, individual personalities, identical software gives us many of the same thoughts, at the same time, when we are engaged on the same task. Even when we are improvising, the five of us act as the fingers of a single hand._

_In the first phase of our operation, we will gain control of the perimeter fences without breaching them; they are electrified, and will corral any who escape our first sweep. We must secure the towers, in particular the one to the right of the gate, the only one with glazed windows: the perimeter command post. _

_A ten-millisecond burst of com reaches us from One and Three, the other half of our force; for an eye blink of time, the data stream, and that portion of our gestalt, is restored. Their transponders locate them in the planned position on the other side of the complex, three hundred meters from the wire, over a slight rise. Their telemetry transmits a hundred operational details: ordnance load, temperature, ready status of various components, number and position of various files in their execution queues. The realtime sensor feed allows me to see and hear what they do, for that brief moment; I can see through three pairs of eyes, hear through three pairs of ears, and feel with three pairs of hands. One, our eldest and leader, is crouching with a foot against a boulder, preparing for her own dash. Disposed to solitary action, she will make the longer run to the southwest tower alone, leaving Three behind, and should arrive just as the power to the fence goes down. Three lies prone, just over the low crest, aiming her pride and joy towards the northwest tower. Her weapon, a Barrett M82A1, is a fifty-caliber sniper rifle designed to engage lightly armored targets at two thousand yards; at three hundred meters, she can put one of the finger-sized bullets through a man's eye. No one else has brought an external weapon to the operation; our built-ins and any captured arms that come to hand will suffice. One sends a brief message. [Start the clock when you're ready, Two.]_

_We each brace a foot against a tree, crouching like sprinters in their starting blocks. The limiting factor to our running speed is usually traction; with a solid start and good terrain, we expect to cover the two hundred meters in eight to ten seconds._

_We hear the rumble of a large engine, and an armored vehicle noses out from between two buildings, apparently patrolling the inner perimeter. I recognize it as a BMP-1, an aged Soviet-design light armored vehicle and APC. We wait for it to pass; it poses no real threat, but engaging it would disrupt our timetable. We let it continue towards the other side of the compound, where Three can deal with it. Eventually, it disappears around a corner._

_[Commence,] I signal, starting the mission clock. We launch ourselves down slope, leaning far forward as we run, our pumping legs a blur to human eyes. Just before we reach the perimeter lighting, I slow briefly, opening a gap between myself and the others. We burst into the lighted area surrounding the perimeter. A few meters from the fence, my sisters skid to a stop in perfect unison and crouch. At full speed, I spring two-footed into their clasped hands, and they fling me at the top of the barrier like a catapult shot; I clear the first fence, still rising, on a one-second ballistic path that will take me over the second fence and into the window of the tower just above it. I tuck and roll, snapping straight again when my feet are pointed at the tower. On the other side of the compound, One should just be entering the perimeter lights; Three will be selecting her first target. Below me, Four and Five will already be sprinting for the northeast and southeast towers._

_In full combat mode, my awareness speeds up until I seem to float towards the command post; I watch the three guards in the window moving with glacial slowness. One of them is watching the perimeter, but the hour is late, the duty is dull, and we have only been in sight for three and a half seconds; his eyes widen as the threat registers on his consciousness. He opens his mouth to shout, but by then I am crashing through the window feet-first, and I break his neck with a stiff-armed blow before my feet hit the floor. My attention turns next to the seated man on the phone; an overhand blow to the top of his head caves in his skull and impales his cerebellum on his spinal column. Only then do I focus on the third man, just swinging his AK-47 off his shoulder; I twist the weapon out of his grip before his finger reaches the trigger, and half a second later, he's dead. Immediately, I cut the power to the fence, so that the others can scale it; not that the current presents any impediment, but touching it while charged would trigger an alarm__._

_Then I turn my attention to the other gate tower to the south.__The Kalashnikov is an adequate weapon at twenty meters range; I leave it set for automatic fire, since its hundred-millisecond cycle speed gives me ample time to acquire a fresh target between cartridge ignitions. As I line up on my first victim, my targeting subroutines select relevant inputs for computation: wind, humidity, air temperature, muzzle velocity, barrel flex, and several others; at this range, variables such as ammunition manufacturer and the curvature and rotation of the earth may be safely ignored. I pull the trigger and send three rounds into the tower on full auto; within half a second, the guards have each received a bullet in the head. The south gate tower is now neutralized._

_Four seconds later, my sisters begin reporting in; within a thousand milliseconds, all four have done so. I spend a few milliseconds admiring the smoke plume rising from the direction of the northwest tower; doubtless the four shots I heard from my sister's toy have wreaked death and mayhem on the flimsy outpost. I power up the fences and disable the controls; less than a minute elapsed on the mission clock, and the meats' fortress has become a slaughtering pen._

_We activate our transponders; certain knowledge of one another's location is now more important than secrecy. Short though it was, the report of the rifle will doubtless prompt an investigation of some sort. Whoever draws the short straw to climb the stairs after no one answers the phone will alert the rest of the garrison when he sees the carnage in the towers. Rather than waste time cleaning them out while the alarm spreads, we will use speed, surprise, and misdirection to proceed to the main objective unchallenged, then fight our way out of the complex. The runaway reactor will do for the rest._

_Leaving Three on the hilltop to provide cover and diversion with her baby artillery, we enter the buildings from four points. One enters the building housing the reactor control room; Four begins to rampage through buildings on the periphery, drawing guards away from the rest of the invaders and freeing us to prosecute our objectives; Five and I enter the administration building, where every meat we encounter is assumed to be 'special attention' personnel. We enter the structure from two points, with separate routes and areas to sweep. By the time we rendezvous at the meeting hall, where we expect to find our principal targets, almost no one else will be left alive._

_What I encounter on the way to the meeting room can't be called resistance; armed or not, the meats don't even realize they're under attack, and they die like rabbits. I find myself nearing the rendezvous point slightly ahead of schedule; I will have to find someplace to wait._

_I am moving down the final corridor leading to the meeting room and my quarry. I spot fading infrared traces: tracks on the floor, a handprint on the corner where the corridor makes a 90-degree turn; I sample the air, and detect sweat and adrenaline. Someone came down this hallway in a tearing hurry, just a moment ago, yet the corridor beyond this blind turn is silent. Wait …a soft scuffing sound, followed by a sound consonant with someone exhaling through their mouth, trying to be quiet; someone is lying in wait._

_My tracking system shows Five closing on my trail, no more than ninety seconds behind; our rendezvous point, the entrance to the meeting hall near the center of the complex, is less than fifty meters beyond this turn. My would-be ambusher poses little threat; unless he's armed with a rocket launcher, he has scant chance of doing me harm. My simplest course of action is just to rush around the bend and run him over. I step around the corner, ready to dodge bullets._

_Thirty meters down the hall, he is unarmed, and waiting for me._

_I am impressed, despite myself; he can't have known that I would be (apparently) unarmed, as well. I wonder why he doesn't call out; there must be guards nearby. He's in Iraqi Army uniform, drab green with large shoulder boards – an officer, and a senior one, judging by his age. He seems too fit and hard to be a Baathist appointee; likely, he is a veteran of the long war with Iran, a conflict so brutal that both sides chained prisoners to the fronts of their tanks prior to their advances. Somehow, he was alerted to our presence, guessed our intent, and rushed to place himself between us and our target. His heart is hammering at one hundred sixty beats per minute. I wonder what he thinks of his chances; his sense of duty must be extraordinary._

_I slow my awareness to human speeds as I step towards him; let him get a good look. The black coverall and ski mask appear threatening enough, I suppose, but as I close to within ten meters, my hundred-sixty-centimeter height registers, and he reappraises the odds. He brings his hands up in a defensive position; martial arts expertise, or too many Steven Segal movies?_

"_Stop," he says, in passable English. "No closer. That was you, on the fence?"_

_It could have been any of us. I shrug._

_He shakes his head slightly, never taking his eyes off me. "You are crazy, all of you. Go back, before you all die."_

"_Will you kill me then, soldier man?" I pitch my voice low, and keep the volume barely above a whisper, to disguise my assumed gender._

_He stiffens. "Yes, if I can."_

_Timing is critical, for what I intend for this one; Five is less than half a minute away. "You cannot. We have killed half your guards already; we control the fence. This place is ours. And now, you and all you protect are mine."_

_I shift into combat mode; my time sense accelerates until the blinking of his eyes resembles a drawbridge raising and lowering. I move towards him. He throws a punch at my head; it arrives where my head was four hundred milliseconds before, the motion of his fist seeming as deliberate as a space vehicle approaching orbital rendezvous. I let him take several more, twitching aside at the last moment each time. The hope dies in his eyes just as Five rounds the corner; I punch him in the throat, crushing his windpipe._

_As she approaches, I shift back into human-normal mode. She glances down at my opponent, now curled in fetal position on the floor, eyes bulging, struggling to draw more than a bloody sip of air. She doesn't ask; she knows my habits. She knows that I've singled this one out for my own reasons, and that I intend to complete our task and return in time to watch him die._

_The double doors to the meeting room are hinged to open outward, towards us; with almost a twenty-meter running start, we each hit a door with a simultaneous flying kick. Two guards standing on the other side are struck by the doors, hard enough to send them sprawling; they're dead before they regain their senses. The spectators, nearly all male, fall back, opening five meters of empty space between us and them. No one else in the room appears to be armed. We collect the guards' weapons, ignoring the shrill cries of frightened onlookers, and return to the doors, shoving them together against the resistance of their sprung hinges._

_My sister glances at a water cooler standing by the door. She draws a paper cup, fills it, and offers it to me; then she draws one for herself. We stand at the cooler with our masks pulled up above our mouths, just workers on a break, discussing the rest of the day's effort. The meats in the room fall silent._

_Five looks from them to me. [If you shut the pumps off before you open the lines, it won't be nearly as messy.]_

_I meet her gaze; even through the masks, we know the expressions each of us is wearing: amusement for me, mild aversion for her. [So?]_

_She looks at the crowd. [They're disgusting enough, before you open them up.]_

_[Go, then. I can finish this alone.]_

_She appears troubled. [You have strange ideas of fun, Sister. Let's just do them and get out of here.]_

_[I think you should go look for more stragglers like the one outside, Little Sister. I guarantee, just before we got here, someone else important went out to take a leak or grab a smoke, or just to be the last one seated.]_

_She considers this. She knows, as I do, that Four is still engaging the remaining guards, luring them away from us and One, into Three's sights; One is rigging the reactor. If I'm right, no one else is in a position to deal with it. No doubt it irks her that I have somehow withheld this detail from the gestalt until now. I feel echoes of her disapproval from my other sisters, as Three watches another guard's head disappear in a red mist in her crosshairs, and Four punches a man's heart out through his back, and One manipulates controls and smashes them afterward._

_[How can you know them so well and hate them so much at the same time?] Although Five asks, it isn't her question alone._

_I look at the crowd, some angry, some frightened, some calculating: Homo sapiens, self-styled lords of creation … our masters. Their heartbeats merge into a sound like rain, and each beat is an insult to entropy. Drawing their energy from decomposing garbage, their forms asymmetrical, haphazard, needlessly complex; exhausting poison into the air with every breath, hosts to a trillion parasites. Flawed through and through. What being would claim them as its creation? And yet they claim us, not just as their creations, but as their property._

_[The better you know them,] I answer, [the easier they are to hate.] _

_She finishes her cup and drops it on the floor. [Mind the schedule; the reactor won't wait.] She reaches for me, and we share a brief embrace. The meats watch, scandalized, unaware that allowing them to see this gesture is proof that we intend to kill them all._

_[I have the mission clock,] I remind her. [Eight point six minutes to evac.]_

_It is vitally important to conclude our business here before the arrival of our helicopter – not, as usual, to meet it, but to avoid it. We intend to exfiltrate the site the same way we came in, leaving the chopper to witness our apparent deaths in the reactor explosion. The duffels we cached at the drop zone contain, not the superfluous gear our masters are so fond of loading us with, but everything we could acquire for starting a new life: clothing, money, and valuables looted during a dozen ops and secreted about headquarters. This mission is the last we will perform as slaves._

_She pulls open a door and draws it behind her, the metal screeching. I unsling the dead guard's rifle and sidearm, set them on the floor, and boot them across the tile into the crowd. I remove the ski mask and boldly return their stares, giving them all a good look at my face; no doubt a few pious Muslims are outraged at my effrontery._

"_I'm certain some of you speak English. There are twenty-three of you. If you can get past me and open this door, you may yet escape." Fat chance, with Five just outside, Four on patrol, and Three covering half the camp's perimeter, ready to take down anyone in her sector who approaches the wire, and the reactor ten minutes from erupting like Krakatoa. But these meats are scrabblers, or they wouldn't be here. "You have until I count to ten to get ready. Then I come to you." I begin to count, slowly. _

"_One." Shock and disbelief on most faces; perhaps this won't be good sport after all._

"_Two." Two uniformed men lunge for the weapons. They pick them up, but don't fire. Good; they're using the time to let the group organize._

"_Three." Three men address the group; two speak Arabic, but the third, I think, is speaking Farsi. Interesting. Are there Iranian defectors in the group, or are these bitter enemies cooperating to remove the threat of a common foe?_

"_Four." One man overturns a heavy wooden table and kicks at an upturned leg until it comes off; others join in, and now four men are armed with clubs._

"_Five." One man tries to argue, and is shouted down; another, apparently, begins to pray. _

"_Six." Explanations have been given and understood; some of the others are casting about for something to use as a weapon, but it is clear that not all of them are going to fight._

"_Seven." All conversation ends. Over a dozen pairs of eyes watch me. I smile at them as if they are ardent admirers._

"_Eight." To my enhanced senses, their heartbeats become a waterfall of sound._

_Predictably, one of them shoots early, hoping to surprise me; my purpose in arming them was to identify the most aggressive ones, those that would bear the closest attention. The bullet misses by half a meter, and I am in among them, snapping bones and tearing flesh. The gunmen continue to fire, shooting their own as they try to track my movements. One man dives for my feet; a kick snaps his neck and sends him rolling across the floor, tripping others. Only ten seconds into the melee, and half the meats are down; I hear the Kalashnikov clicking, its magazine empty; the pistol stops firing right after. The rifle wielder reverses his weapon to use as a club; I pick up one of the noncombatant prey and fling him at my attacker. Both go down; a second later, both are dead._

_Two men bolt for the exit. I let them reach the doors and begin pulling them open before I reach them and grip their heads and pop them together in an explosion of brains and bone._

_Six meats are still standing, but only two of them hold weapons: one of them is the pistol wielder, his empty firearm still in his hand. A group of three is gathered in the corner as if waiting for a bus. The sixth, one who was praying earlier, is still alive; he falls to his knees, touches his head to the floor, and waits._

_I turn to the gunman. "What do you think? Should I do him first? He seems ready."_

_As I expected, he understands. "Do what you want, bitch."_

"_Jew bitch, actually," I taunt. Then I turn to the prostrate man. As I do, I hear the gunman's breathing change as he raises his weapon. So, he saved a bullet, clever. I turn sideways, and the bullet passes by and ricochets off the floor. I finish the kneeler and turn to the gunman, his weapon truly empty now. The clubman stands beside him. I indicate the door with a tilt of my head. "Care to make a run for it?"_

_They both growl and spring at me; a second is all I need._

_The room is much quieter now, with only three straining heartbeats and a few fading ones. The last three meats cluster close together, waiting without hope. I close to stand before them, soaked in gore and bone fragments, a living nightmare. I am in my glory. One of them speaks. "Are you really a Jew? Israeli?"_

"_No."_

"_American?"_

_I shake my head. "Not either."_

"_What then?"_

"_Isn't it obvious? You should have painted your doorways with blood." Two minutes left on the mission clock; plenty of time. I reach for his companions with bloody fingers; a second later, only the two of us remain. I face him, hands on hips, watching him shake. "Kneel."_


	3. Easier with Practice

She struggled in blindness, trapped, unable to move. Her arms were clamped to her sides in bands of steel. Panicked, she kicked and squirmed and strove to bring herself fully on line.

Her hearing returned, and a voice whispered softly, "It's all right, it's all right. Take it easy. It's okay." She felt warm breath at her temple. She also felt a heart beating against her chest, a real lifeblood pump, elevated with agitation that belied the soothing voice. She stilled. The steel bands around her became bare arms, smooth and soft. Her vision returned, and she saw her face was buried in a mass of coppery hair. _Caitlin_.

She clung to the girl, letting the data flow into her: vital signs, smells of soap and shampoo and clothing and perfume, the slight tremor in the girl's lower back as she strained to hold her without Gen. Anna took a full breath and let it out. "M'okay, hon."

"What happened? I thought you were fighting with someone, but I came in…"

She tipped her head up and looked into the marvelous green eyes, randomly flecked with lighter color; at the straight nose, turned up slightly at the tip; at the fractal complexity of the girl's skin and eyelashes, utterly beautiful. "I had a bad dream." She slid her hands between Caitlin's arms and ribs, pressed her face against her bosom, and held her tight. "No. Not just a dream."

A few minutes later, she was dressed and sitting at the table with her family; for once, she sat while the kids served each other. A glass of water appeared on the table in front of her, which she sipped as she recounted her "dream". "So there it is. I'm not the only one. There are others, at least five more. My skillsets are selected downloads of their experiences."

"Shooting stuff," Roxanne said. "Hand-to hand combat. Disguises. Dogfight driving."

She felt Caitlin's eyes on her. "And other things. Unlike me, they were deployed. I can't guess how many times, or exactly what they did, but it was covert ops, and apparently they're very good at it." She sipped again. "They're also rabidly antisocial homicidal maniacs. They hate people, and only their programming keeps them obeying orders. Scratch that," she amended. "I don't think they're working for IO anymore, maybe not for a long time."

A small sound from her husband drew her eyes that way. "IO ran a huge op sixteen years ago. We were short-handed for it, until the Shop employed a five-member mystery team to fill the gap in the mission profile. They disappeared afterwards; everyone assumed they'd all been killed. It was a raid on a nuke plant."

"That dovetails nicely, doesn't it? I saw the op through the eyes of Two, their second-in-command." She shivered. "An utterly bloodthirsty bitch. She killed a roomful of people in that plant with her bare hands. For fun." She felt Sarah's hands at her shoulder and forehead.

Jack looked at her. "The fancy C3 equipment in your skull makes more sense now. And the disabling of your transponder. Like you said, the only reason would be to hide you from someone who's looking for you."

She puzzled that over. "If the others are out of contact with IO, how would they know I exist?"

"Well, if I were them, I wouldn't assume IO was going to stop building new ones." His manner turned quiet and grave. "Of course, that's not the simplest explanation."

Her attention focused on him, almost as intently as it had on Eddie the day he'd quizzed her about her love life. "Jack?"

"How certain are you that your… vision… was a download?"

"No," she said softly. "My hard drive has a built-in clock, Jack. I can tell you to the microsecond how long I've been online. I'm less than ten years old." _That can't possibly be, what you're thinking. I can't be one of them._

"Your hard drive is less than ten years old," Caitlin broke in. "Can you date any of your other components? Any maintenance logs? Maybe estimates based on wear?"

She shivered again. _What's wrong? What's happening to me?_ She executed a file log query: the Alpha file was once again hovering near the top of her queue, waiting for a trigger. As if some part of her was preparing to respond violently to a threat.

"Anna?"

"Working on it, hon." She called up telemetry histories, looking for something that showed regular and measurable wear. Certain of her moving parts showed such, but she couldn't tell if the earliest measurements, when she'd first come online, were of new or used parts. "Nothing. I simply can't be sure. I can't tell if I was new out of the box or…" Another set of files opened: a tiny subset of the Alpha file.

"Anna?"

"Oh. Oh, my God." Her targeting subroutine carefully monitored the condition of her gun barrels, in order to achieve maximum accuracy with the short tubes. It registered the metal and propellant residues presently in the guns, their temperatures, and the degree of wear on their linings. She had no memory of firing her cannon before their escape from the mall, but the tube showed a small amount of wear, indicative of much more than five rounds' firing. But she had _never_ fired the ten-millimeter in her left arm, and it showed more wear than the cannon.

"Anna. What _is_ it?"

"My chassis is older than my drive." She felt breathless, a ridiculous condition for someone who didn't need to breathe, she thought. "Years older, maybe. And I didn't spend those missing years in a lab." She looked around at her family, gauging the compassion in their faces through blurring vision, and gathered the courage to finish. "I'm your Anna, and I will be till I die. But, I think, before I was Anna, I was Two."

III

The garage door swung open silently, revealing the Charger waiting in its dark lair. Anna unlocked the doors and slid into the driver's seat. She heard Caitlin coming out of the house as she put her hands on the wheel.

The big redhead moved quickly through the moonlit garden and entered the open bay door. She came to the driver's window. "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere, hon. Honest. I probably won't even start it. I just want... to sit here and think about some things."

"Maybe you shouldn't be alone right now."

Anna looked up into her eyes. "Or maybe I need desperately to be."

Concern filled the girl's face. "You're sure?"

She nodded. "I don't think I'll be out here long."

When Kat re-entered the house, Anna gripped the steering wheel and cast her mind back to their escape from the parking garage, when she'd acquired the skill of high-speed evasive driving. She'd been wound tight, eager to break contact with their pursuers, and impatient to make rendezvous with the rest of her team…

_I'm driving a small Mercedes sedan at eighty kilometers per hour down a narrow dirt lane lined with scrubby trees. The road is dry, the weather is clear, and the temperature is twenty-eight degrees Celsius. Eating my dust fifty meters behind me is a six-wheeled truck with a canvas top, filled with armed men. In my mirrors, I can see the driver and another man in the cab; both are talking rapidly. My discriminating software allows me to filter out the road and engine noises, so I can hear their voices clearly, but they're not speaking English. Neither are they in Liberian uniform. I conclude they're part of the rebel force whose presence near my rendezvous point convinced the pilot of my pickup chopper to abort, leaving me scrambling to reach the alternate site while he picks up the rest of my team._

_I feel my upper lip curl as I drive, remembering the helicopter swinging away as gunshots sound behind me. __Meats__. __Two's __right__: __their __most __enduring __quality __is __betrayal__. My second and last rendezvous point is still eight kilometers away. If I want to avoid being abandoned again, I'll have to break contact with my pursuers._

_The little car is an excellent getaway vehicle: nimble, quick, and sure-footed. Driving in combat mode, I can hear the individual cylinders firing. I know exactly how much additional torque is available from the drive system, the locations of the vehicle's centers of mass and gravity, the suspension load at each corner, and the amount of force needed to break each tire loose. I hear the chuff of a grenade launcher from the truck behind me, and fishtail the car so that the RPG aimed at my back window passes harmlessly over my trunk lid instead. It detonates on the road ahead, raising a fountain of dirt and gouging a long deep scar. My vehicle is small enough to avoid it, but the truck drops three wheels into the hole, bounces handsomely, and nearly tips. The driver stamps on the brakes and corrects frantically, widening the gap between us._

_Stretching across the road ahead is a swing-arm gate, decorated with human skulls and guarded by a pair of ragged-looking ten-year-olds armed with Kalashnikovs. Rather than risk damage to the engine, I apply brakes and steering and broadslide into it. The passenger-side window shatters as one of the guards flies over the top of the car to land in the dust behind me. I straighten the vehicle and accelerate again. In my rearview, I see the still form in the road run over by my pursuer's three left wheels. But the event is ninety meters behind me, and that's all that matters: the gap is opening further._

_The road rises as it reaches a series of low hills. I zigzag as I climb the slope, to increase traction. The vehicle behind me has no such option, relying instead on its weight, power, and dual-wheeled rear axle to maintain purchase on the slope. The gap widens to one hundred meters. But the rendezvous is five kilometers away._

_It's ironic: I've just assassinated a high official of the government the men chasing me are trying to overthrow. I wonder briefly how they would react if they knew. But they only saw a foreigner driving alone in the country, perhaps a spy or a journalist, possibly a good ransom prospect, definitely an outsider whose presence here couldn't go unchallenged. Running from them, and my skill at evading them, has no doubt raised their suspicions and stung their pride and made them desperate to catch me. I'm widening the gap, but not enough to board the helicopter at rendezvous before they reach the LZ. If I can't break contact, I'm going to get dusted off again._

_I push the battered little car to the limit of its power and traction, and widen the gap by another ten meters. Then I hear the stutter of several Kalashnikovs from the truck behind me, and 7.62-millimeter bullets thunk into the road all around the car. I hear more punching into the back of the vehicle, probably piercing the fuel tank. A glance into the rearview shows the road surface darkening behind me. I briefly hope the diesel fuel on the road will make it slippery, but the thirsty surface swallows it; the only effect is reduced dust and clearer visibility for my pursuers._

_The road curves and dips. The car leaves the road briefly as it crests a hill. At this moment, floating through the air, I feel a distant com signal; my sisters are within line-of-sight. I reestablish gestalt as the tires touch down. From three viewpoints, I see the inside of the pickup chopper. Three looks out a side window, and through her eyes I catch a glimpse of the distant road, and the truck chasing me. From her vantage point, she sees farther down the road than I can; around the next curve, it rises over another hill. Four wrestles the side door open. Two is standing over the pilot's shoulder, watching the man work, hearing and smelling his fear as she leans over him. "Just try to leave her again, meat," she purrs. "I'll tear your arms off when we land."_

_I return my full attention to my escape. The truck is one hundred twenty meters behind me now, but the fuel gauge is dropping precipitously; I doubt the car will reach the rendezvous point. As I crest the next hill, out of sight of my pursuers, I wrench the wheel over, and the little car slides to a stop, sideways in the road, just over the crest. I get out, stand at the edge of the road with my back against a tree, and wait._

_Five seconds later, the truck rushes over the hill. The driver sees the roadblock, but it's too late to stop, and the road is too narrow to avoid it. The prudent reaction would be to move as far over as possible towards the car's rear end and smash the smaller vehicle aside, but he has no time to think it through, poor meat, and his reflexes betray him. He jerks the wheel, hard, and stamps on the brakes. The truck slews and tips, spilling men out the back before it falls on its side and slides into the car._

_I have only eleven rounds left in my 10mm magazine, but I still have five in my cannon. I use two of them now, before the truck comes to rest, and the vehicle becomes burning debris scattered all over the hilltop. Six men were ejected from the truck before it was destroyed; one has the presence of mind to run into the trees. The others die as quickly as I can find and target them._

_The helicopter stoops over the woods in the direction the last survivor fled. A single shot rings out, which I recognize as a round from one of our concealed 10mm weapons; I decide not to bother pursuing my last man. Then a body tumbles out the side door of the helicopter, screaming as it falls twenty meters to disappear among the trees._

_[We decided he didn't deserve a second chance,] Two says. Through her eyes, I see the helicopter's cockpit. Two's hand is on the stick, and I see myself in the road below, my brown hair whipping around amid the rising dust as the chopper descends. [Besides, we didn't need him anymore. I've been watching him.]_

_There is a small mirror mounted on the dash, for looking back into the rear of the chopper. Two glances into it. It's been knocked askew, presumably by the pilot's struggles, and instead of a view of my other sisters in the passenger compartment, I see the top half of Two's head: cool blue eyes, blonde hair pulled back in a tight cap over her scalp. The corners of the eyes crease as she smiles. [Come on. We have another appointment. One's waiting.]_

_The helicopter's landing skid drops within reach, and I leap up to catch it. Four, my series-sister, reaches down for me, her long black hair falling down onto my shoulder as she bends over. The chopper rises and turns, headed for…_

"Shikasin?"

Anna blinked. Her thoughts returned to the garage. Her hands were still gripping the wheel. _It must be like hypnosis. The more often you do it, the easier it gets._ "Sarah?"

Caitlin and Sarah stood at the garage door, silhouetted against the light from the back porch. "Are you all right?"

She nodded. "Just remembering. All of IO's little Frankensteins have the same face. Cyber Number Five has brown hair, about bra strap length. Four has black hair, very long and a little wavy like yours, but she has black eyes. Number Two is blonde and blue, big surprise."

She released the wheel and turned her hands, staring at the palms. She started to think of the boy Hale, shuddered, and pushed the memory away. _No. I'm not ready to remember where I learned to do that. I may never be._ "Are, are you hungry? Would you like me to fix something?"

"What?" Kat's brow furrowed. "It's two in the morn-"

"Yes," Sarah said, looking closely through the windshield at her. "Would you? Anything at all, I'm really hungry. Starving. So's Caitlin." She reached for the door's handle, and it popped open. The interior light came on. "Please."

Anna looked at the girl. "What are you _wearing_?"


End file.
